Client onboarding is widely recognized as a crucial factor in cultivating enduring customer relationships among business-to-business (B2B) professionals. According to a survey conducted by the Harvard Business Review, over 80% of executives expressed that effective onboarding leads to enhanced revenue, referrals, renewals, and loyalty.
SaaS customer onboarding is a crucial component of a successful software product. It provides customers with a seamless transition into the product and helps them understand how to fully leverage its features. This process becomes even more important when customers decide to upgrade to a higher tier. Without proper onboarding, customers may feel overwhelmed and frustrated with the new features and may not see the value in their investment.
When it comes to onboarding high-touch clients, it's important to go beyond simply sending a few automated emails. This process requires careful thought and structure. A well-designed onboarding experience sets up SaaS customers for success by fostering collaboration. By providing personalized training, conducting regular check-ins, and offering tutorials, webinars, and customer support, SaaS companies can ensure a smooth and enjoyable experience for their customers, leading to increased retention and higher customer satisfaction.
Conduct a formal customer hand-off from the sales team
The formal transition of clients from sales to customer success teams is commonly referred to as the sales-to-customer success (CS) handoff. This crucial step ensures that CS teams are well-informed about the client's business, needs, stakeholders, and more, allowing them to create a personalized onboarding experience.
The timing of when customer success teams should take over clients from sales is not set in stone. Some organizations involve customer success early on in the sales process, attending demos and sales meetings. Conversely, other sales teams introduce customer success only after a contract has been signed.
When taking over customers post-sale, it's crucial to gather as much information as possible about the customer and the deal. You can achieve this by scheduling a meeting with sales reps or thoroughly examining digital assets and documents such as sales notes, sales meeting transcripts, and demo recordings.
To ensure that no important details are overlooked, it's advisable to create a comprehensive sales-to-customer success handoff document. This document should outline all the necessary information that sales teams need to collect from customers before the transition, including details about their business' size and pain points. By studying all the information obtained from sales, you'll be well-prepared for the next step in the SaaS onboarding process: the kickoff call.
Initiate customer onboarding with a warm and engaging kickoff call
The kickoff call presents an invaluable opportunity to introduce your customer success team to the client and establish rapport with their team. It allows the customer to familiarize themselves with their designated team members and gain insight into what to expect in the coming weeks. It is highly recommended to schedule the kickoff call within 48-72 hours of the client signing the contract, ensuring a seamless transition and immediate progress. Taking notes and recording the call is a best practice, as it allows for accurate information retention and facilitates a comprehensive follow-up email to the client.
According to CSMPractice, the initial kickoff call should provide the customer with a comprehensive overview of the onboarding process. This includes introducing the team members they will be working with and setting expectations. After a brief introduction about your team and product, it is important to give the client an opportunity to discuss their needs, goals, and challenges. Actively listen to the customer and validate the information gathered from the sales process. Are the client's goals, as outlined in the sales notes, still aligned? Are there any key stakeholders on their side who should be involved in the implementation process? Additionally, it is crucial to ensure that the objectives of the end-users of the product align with those of the buyer at the client's company. During the kickoff call, it is advisable to avoid diving too deep into the details and instead focus on the bigger picture.
Develop tailored customer success plans aligned with client goals and objectives
After identifying your customer's goals, it is crucial to formulate an actionable plan that will contribute to their success - a customer success plan. By establishing this plan from the outset, you demonstrate your commitment to their success and instill confidence.
To create a SaaS customer success plan:
- Begin by selecting the primary use cases / goals your customer aims to achieve with your product.
- Develop the customer success plan by outlining the key steps and information required to attain these goals. This may include details about important stakeholders, implementation schedules, training sessions, check-in frequency, etc.
- Establish quarterly or semi-annual deadlines for customer goals and diligently monitor progress using the customer success plan.
By following these steps, you can effectively support your customers, ensuring their satisfaction and fostering long-term success.
Delegate implementation tasks to customers and customer success managers
To successfully implement your product, collaboration between clients and customer success managers is crucial. Begin by creating a comprehensive list of implementation tasks that both your team and the customer's organization need to accomplish.
As part of the implementation process, your team may need to set up tracking codes on the client's website and establish integrations with specific applications. Similarly, the client's responsibilities may include granting permission to access their software and systems.
Once you have compiled the list of implementation tasks, share it with the client and obtain their approval. To ensure accountability, assign a deadline for each task and regularly follow up with customers to ensure that the implementation progresses as planned.
Conduct comprehensive training sessions for new clients
Live training sessions are a valuable opportunity for customers to master your product and maximize its potential. If you have a substantial local customer base, consider conducting on-site training sessions. Alternatively, live remote training is a viable option for non-local participants. To streamline the training scheduling process, offer clients multiple time options and kindly request their preferred time and mode of delivery (remote or on-site).
Customize the training based on the user type (admin, manager, employee), the client's primary use case, and the key features of their team. This level of personalization is crucial, especially when it comes to impressing high-value customers.
Offer a wide range of self-help resources and tutorials
A comprehensive onboarding process doesn't mean burdening your customers with constant inquiries. Empower them with self-help tools and tutorials, allowing independent troubleshooting and product familiarization at their own pace. You can provide various self-help options such as in-app training, knowledge base, chatbots, and help documentation with videos. To encourage customers to engage with product training materials, create concise and easily consumable tutorials. Remember, personalized self-service options can enhance the learning experience.
Regularly check in on the progress of implementation, training, and goals
Client onboarding goes beyond simply scheduling a training session or providing learning resources. It is an ongoing process that involves monitoring the client's progress in implementation and identifying any obstacles they may face in achieving their goals.
For regular check-ins, a quick email works well on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. However, for monthly and quarterly check-ins, it is preferable to schedule face-to-face meetings whenever possible. Here are some key points to cover during check-ins with new clients:
- Weekly or two-week check-in: Follow up with customers and customer success managers to ensure completion of assigned implementation tasks.
- Monthly check-in: Review training progress and inquire about any challenges customers may be encountering.
- 90-day check-in: Assess customers' progress toward their goals, confirm proper tool usage, and address any technical issues. Celebrate milestones achieved together.
Check-ins also provide an opportunity to educate customers about new features, reconfirm goals, and make adjustments to their plans if necessary.
Moxo, a collaborative SaaS onboarding software, offers organizations the ability to integrate collaborative onboarding capabilities within a product, or as a standalone solution. Connect with customers through seamless messaging or video meetings, and build custom interaction workflows that mirror your onboarding processes. By centralizing check-in discussions, both customers and customer success managers can effortlessly monitor progress, stay on track, and ensure streamlined onboarding experience.
Streamline your process with SaaS Onboarding Software
Even though a high-touch onboarding process needs to be personalized, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time you onboard a new customer. Instead, create customized onboarding playbooks for customers in different tiers like Business, Premium, and Enterprise that customer success managers can use.
In the realm of SaaS, customer onboarding is a crucial aspect that can have a big impact on the success of a business. Effective onboarding sets the tone for the entire customer experience, from initial engagement to long-term retention. With so much competition in the SaaS market, it's important for companies to create a positive and seamless onboarding process to differentiate themselves from the rest. This means ensuring that customers have access to the resources and support they need to make the most of the software, as well as providing a clear and concise introduction to the product. By prioritizing onboarding, SaaS businesses can boost customer satisfaction, drive user adoption, and ultimately achieve greater success in the marketplace.
Moxo, a SaaS onboarding software, empowers you to create flow workspaces that seamlessly integrate a workflow automation layer with a comprehensive contextual interaction suite. With Moxo, you can effortlessly design onboarding templates for your most frequent processes using an intuitive workflow builder. Leverage Moxo's diverse range of business actions within your SaaS onboarding process, including forms, file requests, approvals, acknowledgments, tasks, eSignatures, and meeting scheduling. Additionally, benefit from Moxo's expanding library of third-party actions and automations, such as DocuSign and Hubspot, to kick-start your onboarding workflow while leveraging the business systems you’re already using.
